“Sure I wouldn’t mind. I’m hungry to cut into this game, and even up with the pack of tinhorns that gave me a hot half-hour yesterday.”
And thereupon Wild Bill began telling what he had seen and heard in the level of the Forty Thieves. When he had finished, J. Algernon Smith was wide-eyed and staring.
“Really,” he managed to gasp, “this is most astounding.”
“I reckon it’s all that,” mildly answered Wild Bill. “The very name of that mine, though, is enough to make a man think some. Who’s the fellow you’re going to deal with?”
“His name, I believe, is James Lawless.”
“That’s another name that’s bad medicine.”
“I’d never thought of the names in that light.”
“That fellow that was talking with you, right after you got out of the stage, was Clancy, the scoundrel that was blowing gold into the rock with a shotgun. What did he want?”
“Why, he was telling me that Lawless hadn’t got here yet, and he was warning me not to say anything to anybody about my business in Sun Dance.”
“You couldn’t blame him for that,” remarked Wild Bill dryly.